Monday, 23 March 2015

In the quest for a looser, more impressionist expression of these still lifes, the move from small itsy bitsy 5"x7" paintings to a more robust 20"x24" inch format would help. Besides using a much larger brush with the commensurate longer handle to keep me away from the canvas surface, standing instead of sitting also seemed to give the strokes more oomph. Here is the set up for the last two paintings, I am sorry that I didn't take a photo of the first for you to see.

The goal in these three paintings was to understand the relationship between the underpainting and the final highlight hits in creating the form, where to place vanishing edges, and what details to eliminate, what elements to include, to produce a stronger composition.

As you can see, This first one painting has it all, flowers, carpet and details. IN a way, I enjoy all the bits of colour as it creates both the scene and a pattern.

In the second painting, I took out the 'whites' partly to reduce the amount of colours included in the work, but also because I started thinking how odd it was to have tulips, asters, sunflowers, gerberas, lilies and orchids all at the same time when they don't bloom in the same seasons. I have wondered about this in other paintings as well, should one aim to have the elements of a painting be 'in season' with each other? Or is this just inevitable evidence pointing to a culture that supplies almost everything at anytime?

For this third painting, the canvas has been swung around to vertical and the still life has been cropped in closely to create a more stripped down composition. I do miss the wild patterning of the first painting even as I enjoy the quieter look of this arrangement. The darn tulips and the gerbera kept moving while I was painting even though I thought I was painting really quickly. Hazards of painting from set ups rather than photos I guess. At a workshop I attended this weekend the presenter, a landscape artist said, that it is a real problem when painting outdoors! I can imagine.